Posted on 01/15/2019 11:54:34 AM PST by lowbridge
Volkswagen is investing $800 million in its plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a move that will add 1,000 jobs to the factory, the company announced Monday. It plans to build electric cars there.
Volkswagen's investment in Tennessee comes weeks after General Motors announced plans to close three North American plants and shift its production focus away from sedans, to free up money to develop to electric and self-driving vehicles.
The move also comes amid talks between Volkswagen and Ford about pooling resources to make the next generation of vehicles.
The new Tennessee jobs and production should begin in 2022, according to the company's statement.
"The US is one of the most important locations for us and producing electric cars in Chattanooga is a key part of our growth strategy in North America," said VW CEO Herbert Diess.
Volkswagen sold over 10 million cars last year. Only 1% were electrified
Volkswagen is among the world's largest automakers. The company reported record sales of 10.8 million vehicles last year. But only about 1% of those sales were electric cars.
Volkswagen and other leading automakers are scrambling to boost production of electric and self-driving cars, which they believe are the future of the industry.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
This is why Tesla cars never stood a chance in the long term. The hard part of building an electric car is the car, not the electric. Musk was naive to the extreme to believe the major auto manufacturers would sit idly by and let him dominate the market, and they all already have decades experience in building the car part of electric cars. Plus they can sell electric cars as loss leaders and subsidize their production with profits from ICE cars. Musk can only subsidize his losses with government charity.
And it also was inevitable that the existing manufacturers eventually would “Preston Tucker” Musk.
Cars made to be sold in sunny CA. In the real world, where AC and heat are must, E vehicles are still a beautique fad.
” The hard part of building an electric car is the car, not the electric.”
Here’s a video about a guy who is buying a certified used Tesla. He put the $2500 down in early November and was hoping to have the car by Christmas. It’s not going well for him, so far: It isn’t just the quality control of the build that is difficult, there’s also customer service.
Senator Bob Corker got us into this fiasco...
TN had top pay MILLIONS to VW to get them to come here...
Crazy Corker thought he did a wonderful thing...
These batteries are increasing in density by about 6-7 percent per year
The new batteries which are solid state batteries have been made in the lab and many different groups are scaling up to try to manufacture. They are cheaper, charge very fast, don't heat up and cause fires and don't need to be cooled.
A lot of the cost to make a ice car and repair an ice is the drive train plus a fuel system, exhaust system, and cooling system. Because EV have none of that, they are easier to make than ice cars.
Eventually the EVs will be very cheap and many people who make their living on ice cars and producing the fuel will be displaced
kwh
It took me a few minutes to figure out what an "ice" car was ...
His cars have less than stellar reliability and build quality as well. Though until capacative batteries are perfected electric cars will remain a niche market.
It’s closer than you think by using graphene.
electrified........ hybrid or full electric?
I think hybrid will be what they are building
Nephew in Michigan has been driving an all-electric Nissan Leaf every day for a 40 mile commute without a problem for years.
40 miles, that is good. Lets hope he never gets stuck.
Because getting stuck in a conventional car NEVER happens.
So did a Polar Bear come up and give him a hug?
E cars may have a "niche" as a city commuter but you will need a internal combustion road car to go along with it. I would consider one, naaaaaw.
And VW says they're making them "for the millions, not the millionaires" so that's good.
Hybrid makes sense. Full electric does not.
I wish I could recall the Freeper I had the conversation with a few months ago about the “efficiency” of gas versus electric cars. He had numbers that confirmed my long held, but unsubstantiated, belief that no electric system (available today) could match the energy efficiency of the gasoline engine. The amount of almost indefinite energy storage in a gallon of gas costs way more when you have to generate and use energy on the electric grid to charge batteries sufficiently to get the same work in an electric system.
I fail to see how environmentalist don’t get that, ultimately, electric cars are a bigger carbon footprint than economic gas driven cars.
Actually, Tesla made a reasonable (at the time) bet that US government pressure would grow quickly to mandate EVs, and that a larger traditional car company would overpay for his groundwork. His gamble didn’t pay off big, but it hasn’t broken him yet either.
What a bunch of dinosaurs. Don’t you know manufacturing is dead?
Democrats are deeply saddened, but gain strength from knowing Obama did this. ROTF LMAO
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